Saturday, June 28, 2008

Must re-up on underwear

6.28.08

I’m sitting in a training on voter registration, listening to an overview on how to stop voter fraud that I wrote. It’s funny. The hotel we’re in is quite nice, perhaps an indication of where the economy has been that I was able to get us a viable deal in a place that has four pillows per double bed and a view of the river.

We’re bringing on three more RD’s and thusly I no longer have 10 offices that I’m responsible for. Thank God. 10 offices turns out to be just about my organizing event horizon now. Any more and I worry that I’ll implode.

I’ve been traveling a lot. The three day site visit I packed for has turned in to a two week trip including a training; I’m living my life out of an overnight bag stuffed with newly bought hanes t-shirts and underwear.

There’s such a different feeling around this election. While our work is ostensibly non-partisan, there’s an obvious upside for a black candidate who turns out black voters at a 85-90% rate.

Obama himself has noted that people see in him whatever transference of hope they need; and I find myself doing something very similar. It’s little to do with his oratorical skill, though of course I’m as easily swept up by that as anyone.

Rather I find myself pinning my hopes and dreams on his organizational structure; they are lean, efficient and pragmatic, a national moneyed organization finally based on similar principles to the kind of organizing I’ve been doing. The constituencies this campaign will depend the most on will be youth and black voters, an electorate that is by far the most simpatico on the issues I deem important.

I finally, for the first time in my life, feel like I’m working on something electoral that actually represents me. I’m inspired by the candidates clear intelligence and clarity of thought, his even keel, his ideology. Yet his pragmatism, his willingness to compromise for the greater long-term good, his nuanced thought on any given subject are draws, even moreso.

I miss my wife, but once again I find myself at a cusp. I am about to begin a new job, I will move again within the next couple of months, and a new era will finally begin in our country within the next several months. I’ve spent my adult life fighting off attacks by the Bush Administration against the environment and civil rights. Within the last year we’ve begun the process of pushing forward on progressive legislation as opposed to defensive.